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33 1 



GARGOYLES AND OTHER POEMS 



GARGOYLES 



And Other Poems 



HOWARD MUMFORD JONES 




THE CORNHILL COMPANY 

BOSTON 






v^^ 



Copyright, 1918 

by 

THE CORNHILL COMPANY 



FEB -3 1212 

5)CI.A512222 



TO MY WIFE 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Acknowledgment for permission to republish the following poems in 
book form is accorded the publishers. 

AT THE DUNES 

Numbers I-IV appeared in The Forum, August, 1916 
Number V appeared in Poetry, December, 1916 

HIS MOTHER 

Appeared in The Texas Review, April, 1917 

UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 

Aphrodite and The Professor Muses appeared in Poetry, April, 1916 

Librarians and Phonology appeared in The Midland Magazine, July 
1917 

Term Paper in English 37, under the name, Chaucer and Cressid, ap- 
peared in The Texas Review, February, 1917 

"Heu Amor! Quam Dulcis in Universitatibus est Tua Memoria," 
"Each Student is Assigned to an Adviser," and To a Certain Scien- 
tist appeared in Reedv's Mirror in June, 1918. 

The six sonnets in this section are to appear in Contemporary Verse. 

CHICAGO 

Plows appeared in The Survey, in the fall of 1914 

The Movies was printed in A Little Book of Local Verse (see From the 

Mississippi) 
Audiences appeared in The Playbook in 1914 
Economics appeared in The American Magazine in 1913 

A SONG OF BUTTE 

Is to appear in Contemporary Verse. 

FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 

Most of the poems under this head appeared in a privately-printed 

booklet, A Little Book of Local Verse. 
The Masque of Marsh and River appeared at the time of the production 

of the masque 
The Garden in September appeared in The Midland Magazine, March, 

1916 

GARGOYLES 

With the exception of numbers XII and XIV, these poems appeared in 
Contemporary Verse, December, 1916 



Between the bud and the hlovm flower 
Youth talked with joy and grief an hour. 

With footless joy and wingless grief 

And twin-horn faith and disbelief 
Who share the seasojis to devour; 

And long ere these made up their sheaf 
Felt the winds rou7id him shake and shower 

The rose-red and the blood-red leaf. 
Delight whose germ grew never grain. 
And passion dyed in its own pain. 

Then he stood up, and trod to dust 
Fear and desire, mistrust and trust. 

And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet. 

And bound for sandals on his feet 
Knowledge and patience of what must 

And what things may be, in the heat 
And cold of years that rot and rust 

And alter; and his spirit's meat 
Was freedom, and his staff was wrought 
Of strength, and his cloak woven of thought. 

Swinburne, Prelude of Songs Before Sunrise 



CONTENTS 

AT THE DUNES page 

I. First Impressions 3 

II. At Miller 5 

III. Night 7 

IV. Dawn 8 

V. November 10 

HIS MOTHER 13 

UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 

Aphrodite 22 

Librarians 25 

The Professor Muses 27 

Phonology 30 

Term Paper in English 37 33 

"Lo! I have worshiped beauty all my days" 38 

"This is the crown they sought, the height they won" ... 39 

"O wild and free upon the lawless hills" 40 

" Master of arts ! Diploma tight in hand" 41 

"We study Marlowe. Virgins, not unwise" 42 

" A rag of sunset flaps my window-pane " 43 

"Heu Amor! Quam Dulcis in Universitatibus est Tua Memorial" 44 

"Each Student is Assigned to an Adviser" 47 

To a Certain Scientist 49 

CHICAGO 

In Factory Town 51 

On Seeing Lorado Taft's " The Solitude of the Soul " . . . .53 

Plows 54 

The Wrecking of the House 54 

The Movies 55 

The Spinner 55 

Audiences 57 

Economics 57 

Insomnia 60 

THE MECHANIST 62 

DEAD CHILDREN 63 

ENIGMA 64 

A SONG OF BUTTE 65 

[ix] 



CONTENTS 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI page 

At Eagle Bluff • • •. 67 

Certain Reflections at Midway 69 

"When shall we together" 71 

From Trempealeau .73 

Sunday 74 

Railway Sketches 75 

Anent the Street-Car 78 

" Climb up with me to Clififwood and lie down " 80 

June 81 

Lyrics from " The Masque of Marsh and River " 83 

Rain on the River 86 

A Red Leaf 87 

The Garden in September 88 

Old Men .••..,, 90 

"Deep within a coulie" 91 

An Abandoned Cemetery 92 

GARGOYLES 

I. Prelude 95 

II. Fantasia 96 

-III. Nocturne 97 

IV. Immortality 98 

V. Grotesque . 99 

VI. Theme and Variations 99 

VII. Fresco 100 

VIII. Motto 101 

IX. Hamlet 102 

X. Arabesque 103 

XI. Fugue Solonelle 104 

XII. Interlude 105 

XIII. Dialectics 106 

XIV. Marche 107 

XV. Allegory 108 



GARGOYLES 



AT THE DUNES 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS 

Beyond the trouble of the street, 

Beyond the weary town 
An eager wind goes forth to meet 

The dunes and beaches brown, 
To walk by blue and lonely miles 

Wild and alone and free — 
Here where the ghost of summer smiles 

Across the autumn sea. 

By leagues the curving headlands wheel. 

By miles the beaches run, 
Grotesque beneath a sky of steel. 

Barren beneath the sun. 
And bleached like dry and whitened bones 

The fisher-houses stand 
Like bulwarks or like antique stones. 

More lonely than the land. 

Before, the blue lake shameless lies. 

Naked and gross and bare, 
As some Titanian siren tries 

To lure men to her lair; 
Behind, the bleak hills writhe and twist 

In obscure agony 
As though God had each by the wrist 

And each strove to be free. 
[3] 



GARGOYLES 



And here the stricken sand is thrown 

Forward and back and forth. 
And here before the winds are blown 

The great dunes south or north; 
They have nor sleep nor rest nor ease. 

They march incessantly 
Now lakeward from the twisted trees, 

Now shoreward from the sea. 



[4 



AT THE DUNES 



II 
AT MILLER 

To Miller on a Sunday comes 

Each fellow with his girl, 
Deaf to the town's incessant drums 

And piccolo's shrill whirl; 
Her escort bears the lunch she takes 

And each girl giggles loud 
To hear the jokes her fellow makes 

Upon the joyous crowd. 

They build a fire upon the beach 

To roast their wieners by. 
They toss a ball from each to each 

With silly shout and cry; 
The plain girls read, the couples stroll, 

The men race on the sand, 
Or trousers to the knee they roll 

To wade a rod from land. 

Impertinent and useless things, 

They eat and drink and shout 
Until the night on throbbing wings 

Shakes all her star-dust out; 
Then two by two they hurry back 

Like hens to catch the car. 
While down the dead day's crimson track 
Falters the evening star. 
[5] 



GARGOYLES 



They are afraid to stand alone 

Under the empty sky; 
Back to the town they herd, and drone 

Their lives away and die; 
They huddle back to town in fear, 

Fear of the night and God — 
It's safer where the streets are near. 

Than where His feet have trod! 

The sun goes down, the stars come out 

Over the purple sea. 
And in the west the chimneys spout 

Hell forth all fiery, 
But though night be upon the wolds. 

And hell upon the sky, 
Impassively the lake beholds, 

The dunes, impassively. 



[6] 



AT THE DUNES 



III 
NIGHT 

And now the utter loneliness 

Is more than man can bear: 
The waves are sadder than distress, 

The dunes are like despair. 
The lake is blank and pallid gold 

Where only sea-gulls dwell, 
Spirits by God left unenroUed 

In heaven and earth and hell. 

Hard on the brown and fading sands 

The teeth of crumbled waves 
Bite out their stories of old lands 

And peoples in their graves; 
Above the sun is dead, below 

God and the world are dead. 
And only the leaden waters go 

Across their leaden bed. 

And slowly from the ashen air 
Shudders the paling light, 
And slowly up the sky doth fare 
The stark and naked night, 
Night of the mad and staring stars. 

Night beyond time or space. 
Void, vacant, blank as prison bars. 
Night, without form or face ! 
[7] 



GARGOYLES 



IV 
DAWN 

Not always are the dunes as bare, 

As lone, as lost as this: 
When morning winnows all the air 

With driven gold, the kiss 
Of the cool wave on the lit beach 

Softens the great, gaunt land 
And gently the little waves have speech 

With the bleak, barren sand. 

Then in the pink and yellow lake 

Along the golden shore 
The white mermaidens' bosoms break 

Red ripples on the floor 
Of the smooth sea, and faint and far 

Their wild song swells and sighs 
Across the beach, across the bar 

Under the shifting skies. 

And fitfully and reluctantly 

A lone leaf tiptoes down 
Across the sands into the sea 

To float, all curled and brown, 
A fairy shallop on the deep 

Wherein two pixies ride; 
Their little wizened faces peep 

Over the frigate's side. 

[8] 



AT THE DUNES 



Then dance on every wrinkled dune 

Sandmen and brownies small; 
The dry leaves keep a rustling tune. 

The sleepy birds do call, 
And from the poplars and the pines 

Dryads and nymphs peep out 
To see the elves in quavering lines 

Advance and turn about. 

The mermaids sing, the sandmen pace 

A jolly rigadoon. 
The pixies steer and reef and race 

Beneath a waning moon; 
The little stars look down to grin. 

The moon looks down to sigh, 
And longs to dance and prance and spin, 

Being lonely in the sky. 

And then a sudden shout goes forth. 

And the white birds come out, 
A cold wind hurries from the north 

To drive the stars about, 
And one by one the mermaids sink. 

The sandmen steal away. 
And up the steep sky's eastern brink 

Marches the awful day. 



GARGOYLES 



NOVEMBER 

The dunes are graves that shift and dance, 

Showing a skeleton 
When by the pushing wind's advance 

Their coffin is undone, 
And in the ribbed and bitter sand 

A murdered tree puts out 
A white Umb like a ghastly hand, 

A dead trunk like a snout. 

The dunes are ghosts that line the beach. 

Hidden and veiled and wild. 
Now holding silence each with each, 

Now lisping like a child, 
And to their speech the waves reply. 

The wind and the low waves. 
Whispering and wildly wondering why 

They talk of ghosts and graves. 

They are as graves, they are as ghosts, 

They are as sphinxes set 
For umpires on these desolate coasts 
With life and death at fret; 
Life with her grass and juniper. 
Death with his cloud of sand: 
She strives with him and he with her 
Between the lake and land. 
[101 



AT THE DUNES 



The poplars and the pines are hers, 

His are the sands and wind; • 
Sometimes his desperate breathing blurs 

The air till she grows blind; 
With crooked hands and fingers green 

She clasps the dunes to kill — 
And always the troubled waters keen, 

Always the sea-gulls shrill. — 

The wind is fellow once with Death, 

Storming against the land; 
He howls across the hills, his breath 

Burdened with snow and sand; 
The wind is fellow once with Life, 

Sweeping against the sea. 
Sweeping across the waves in strife 

With Death for enemy. 

Yet life and death and land and lake. 

To him what things are these? 
Whether the sand-dunes shoreward shake, 

Fleeing the broken seas. 
Whether the water be as glass 

Or wild beasts without chains, 
They shift and change and scud and pass. 

Only the wind remains! 

Only the wind ! — The dead leaves flee, 
Like smoke the blue lake fades, 

The hills flow down into the sea. 
And night and day like shades 
[11] 



GARGOYLES 



About a carried lantern run 

Jigging alternately, 
And star and moon and bolted sun 

Slide crazily in the sky. 

O God! The whole world like the dunes 

Dances fantastic-wise 
Down to what end, before what tunes, 

Beneath what dancing skies ! 
And blown along like grains of sand 

Ourselves must whirl and flee 
Before a wind across the land 

Into what open sea! 



12] 



HIS MOTHER 



The first shock of the letter that she had 

Was Hke a sudden sword-thrust through the brain; 

Then numbness, melting sharply into rain 

Of hard and stormy tears, more hard than sad; 

These left her staring as a man gone mad 

With brutal blows will sagely wait for pain. 

Desiring it, yet ever and again 

Shake for his fear that pain is dreary bad. 

Thereafter she arose and went about 

Some trivial duty of the house, of course. 

(A mother is a thing past finding out!) 

But always as she swept, some voice as hoarse 

As ocean in a fog where blind ships run. 

Spoke dumbly in her heart, "My son! My son!" 



II 



He wrote her that he loved this girl and sought 
To take her for his wife. She glowed to sense 
Under the halting words his reverence, 
The wonder for the woman God had wrought 
And the white beauty of her. She had taught 
Something like this, was proud to have him fence 
His love around with awe and excellence. 
And yet — O patient heart! — the pain he brought! 

[13] 



GARGOYLES 



Her only son! Almost she seemed to feel 

The little curling fingers on her breast, 

The small, weak mouth, the helpless limbs and feet 

Had she not kept his underclothing neat. 

And cooked his morning pancakes while he dressed? , 

And now — and now — why, this girl dared to steal! 



Ill 



So it had come at last, this dreaded thing 

Long taught to hide, as somewhere in each man 

Death sits with moveless mouth, a little span 

Forgot and hidden, till his hour shall ring. 

And the mouth move and speak. She felt the wing 

Of strange, familiar, sudden destiny fan 

Her blanching cheek. She knew . . . And yet there 

ran 
Some hours ere she grasped her suffering. 

Some hours ere her mind came flooding back 

In a great washing sea of bitterness: 

Her George — the hour had struck, if somewhat slack; 

The universal clockwork ticking on 

Compelled her through this futile dim distress, 

And would be ticking when her son was gone. 



IV 



It was not that the girl was bad or cheap; 
No, she was kind and good and gently raised, 
Better, perhaps, than George. Her anger blazed. 
Helpless against its privilege to weep, 

[14] 



HIS MOTHER 



(They'd think it fitting!) where she longed to sweep 
The Fact and God and George in one huge crazed 
Slow-tottering crash, while the stunned earth, amazed, 
Shrank from its pivot backward down the deep ! 

Oh, there were times she burned to face the Lord, 
In cold and desperate fury ached to know 
Why she was picked for this fantastic fun ! . . . 
And then a cold fear like a numbing blow 
Took hold of her, and she w ould read the Word, 
Praying, "Thy will, O God, Thy will be done!" 



She hoped and prayed that George had chosen well; 
Herself had drained love's goblet to the lees ! . . 
Beside a dead man lying down, she sees 
A loveless bride to whom the marriage bell 
Was little other than a marriage knell; 
Whom pride, not love, thus forced upon its knees 
An inward loathing. . . . Everyone agrees 
Her wedlock was the happiest they can tell. 

And when he died, they say she missed him much. 
Donned meekly then her widowhood and cried. 
None guessing at the reason. Now she prayed. 
Prayed that the bridegroom and the happy bride 
Be counted with the couples love had made. 
In praying she could not name any such. 



[15] 



GARGOYLES 



VI 



Sometimes she longed to have the marriage done. 

Remembering the tumult and the blur 

Of her own heart, the quickened pulse, the stir 

Of leaping sense, of body and soul made one. 

O pitifully weak for love to stun 

And cripple in his passionate quest they were, 

With all the soft young night aflame with her, 

And he made lord of star and moon and sun! 



Elsewhile she strove against the gates of love 
To break them down with terror, wildly pushed 
The great hand backward on the clock of life, 
Prayed, wrote him once, was blamed; for all her strife, 
The marching brazen hand still hourward rushed. 
The slow gates crushed her even as she strove. 



VII 



To her the house seemed very empty now. 
And wearily at night she climbed the stair, 
Holding her lamp against the darkness there, 
And half -afraid, and tired; her fine, large brow 
Looked puzzled, always, and her friends told how, 
Since George had got engaged, his mother's hair 
Was grayer, and that George was hardly fair. 
And how her body bent like an apple-bough. 



16 



HIS MOTHER 



But she rebuked them if they called him cruel, 
And said how glad she was, that George had been 
Kind to his mother always, and a jewel. 
And she was proud his girl was such a queen. — 
Yet every night her foot upon the stair 
Dragged slowlier up the empty darkness there. 



VIII 

And she who found him, shapeless, by a star 
In windy spaces where the dust is blown. 
Impalpable and thin, that being strown 
On earth, takes shape and breathes; who at the bar 
Of death looked down for him; who was the jar 
Wherein his essence mingled with her own. 
The tortured door that opened with a moan, 
The crucifixion and the fiery car; 

Upon another woman she must lay 

Through him that anguish and the rods of pain, 

Through him a mother must resign a son 

Still to some younger! . . . 'Twas eternal play 

Of cog and ratchet meeting, that was plain. 

Whose hidden millstones grind forever on. 



IX 



She raged against the injustice of her state, 
Thinking how willingly this only son 
She would have lost were battles to be won, 
Or God had need of such — O gentler fate! 

[17 1 



GARGOYLES 



But thus to pay with sterling worth for plate, — 

A mouth, a flutter, a thing of twenty-one, 

A silly, giggling girl intent on fun. 

No, no! The purchase price was far too great. 

God had been tricked or had not understood. 
The books were falsified, the balance pan 
Disordered that so weighed with ribbons, blood: 
A sure accountant would correct his error. — 
Thus in her bed one night, while darkness ran 
In long, slow, leaping waves of shame and terror. 



X 



Her mind went back along unfooted ways 
By many a grass-grown, many a lonely road 
To that far field where love had his abode 
And one fair promise ruled the singing days; 
Her heartbeat quickened to dead lovers' praise, 
A thin cheek faintly burned, and old tears flowed 
To feel that her poor, withered lips yet glowed 
With ghostly kisses and one whispered phrase. 

Dim pranks of girlhood rash and very sweet 
Incredibly awoke — slight, foolish things: 
A solemn interchange of ruby rings, 
A dance, a furtive walk. — Outside, the street 
Under the dawn was blank and very still 
Till, of a sudden, birds began to trill. 



18 



HIS MOTHER 



XI 



"Well, she would not have George beloved of none, 

Would not object or hinder. Who was she, 

A poor, old, weary woman, to disagree 

To God's desire with maid and woman's son? 

Had George not stinted him of proper fun 

To buy her pretty things? And after tea 

Sat with her often? She was glad to see 

The love and happiness her boy had won. 

Honestly glad — 'twas time to wed — above 

All else would not be selfish. Thinking this, 

Her dry throat pained her much. . . . How youth 

could rob, 
And hurt and burn and sting! — And what was love? 
A little laughter broken by a kiss, 
A little kissing broken by a sob! 



XII 

The girl — the girl was coming ! Her shrewd eyes 

Where hunger had been levelled into pain. 

Like springs of troubled water filled again; 

O youth, the pliant willow, may despise 

Old oaks that have been twisted to strange guise 

By blowing winds across a desolate plain; 

To alter them is trouble all in vain. 

And youth is no admirer of the wise! . . . 

[19] 



GARGOYLES 



She felt that life had passed her in a dust 

With noisy trumpets and exultant face, 

Leaving her stunned and out-of-date; the place 

Was shabby and her dresses none too new, 

Her ways peculiar ways and old. . . . She must 

Think of some things a girl would like to do. . . . 



XIII 

Like one with desperate battle worn and fain 
Of rest by some untroubled, old-world sea 
Where no ships steer but always on the lea 
Is silence, and a languor in the brain, 
So, moving strangely ever and again 
To dusting, sweeping, baking bread, was she: 
Meanwhile her spirit worshiped changelessly 
A dim arcanum of perpetual pain. 

A solemn sorrow, half akin to joy 

Was her familiar friend that knew no change; 

She would have missed, she thought, the dreamy grief, 

Wherein her beaten spirit found relief, 

And if his sweetheart had renounced the boy. 

She could not feel more phantom-like or strange. 



XIV 

O friend, the strange ways of a mother's mind 
God does not wholly fathom, nor may we : 
Behold her waiting for the train at three, 
Waiting for George — and her. These eyes are kind, 

[20] 



HIS MOTHER 



Wistful — no more than that — which should be blind 
With looking on at hell's high revelry. 
And this old body that you smile to see 
Before all heaven was broken like a rind. 

Yet here she stands expectant for a train. 
Timid and tired, yet proud unconquerably, 
Who walked in darkness bitter hills of pain. 
And saw the passion of Gethsemane, 
Who saw and lived and, sheltered from the rain. 
Waits at the depot for the train at three. 



21 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 

APHRODITE 

I walked among the gray -walled buildings; 

The city girdles them, 

And distant clamors 

Break on their towers as the sea 

Whirls its long lines of sound against the coast. 

Among them the professors walked, 

Stooping men with glasses 

And queerly eager feet; 

Some wore Van Dyke beards, 

And on some the hair was silvered; 

They talked very rapidly, and all were laden 

With many books. 

From hall to solemn hall the students 

Streamed in black lines. 

Youths and maidens chatting endlessly. 

Worn women with drawn mouths, 

And dissatisfied men; 

They were seeking something, 

Seeking, seeking. 

Seeking they knew not what. 

I, too, passed with them into a building; 
It was crowded with students, 
And they seemed in the dingy light of the hall 
Like spectres of dead youth. 

[22] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



The walls were drab, 

The bulletin boards by the offices 

And the ugly chandeliers 

Looked dusty in the light, 

And I wondered what he did in this place, 

Struggling through the narrow panes, 

The lord of life. 

The eternal sun. 

Suddenly in the crowded hall 

I saw her walking toward me, 

The matchless, the miraculous, 

The divine Aphrodite, 

And around her the students swarmed, 

And saw her not. 

Ah Aphrodite ! 

Her body in the crowded way, like a pillar of light, 

Shone naked and beautiful. 

With Parian limbs and softly-moulded bosom; 

Her face was terrible. 

Sweet and swift as lightning launched at midnight; 

Crushing against her snowy breasts a burden 

Of crimson roses, blood against her skin, 

One arm was raised. 

And from her hand, her divine hand, 

She scattered roses. 

Red roses. 

Crisp flakes of kindling fire. 

A|murmur of music 

Floated about her head; 

Her feet, moving, echoed strangely in my heart — 

Eternal singing; 

[23] 



GARGOYLES 



The centuries were singing. 
The golden-hearted singers of the world 
Were singing with them 
Unutterable songs. 

Ah Aphrodite ! 

Thou dead, thou deathless goddess, 

Sprung of the wind and the wave and the clean, sweet 

foam ! 
The wild songs of thy moving feet 
Choked into silence. 
And I heard a sob arise 
As of a string plucked ardently and breaking 
With burden unutterably sweet. 
And I fell before thee, 
Before thy feet, 
O deity. 

Thy naked, flame-like feet. 
And kissed them. 

Passionately kissed them while the roses 
Dripped round me like red rain ! 

Ah the wild, sweet, unendurable pain of the roses. 
Sharp and bitter and fierce as flame-smitten lips! 
Ah the eyes, the burning lips, the bosom! 
Ah Aphrodite! . . . 

The students swarmed again about me. 
Women with drawn mouths. 
Dissatisfied men, 
Seeking something, seeking, 
Seeking they knew not what. 



124] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



LIBRARIANS 

A bare-walled room; a counter at one end; 
The ages, catalogued and ticketed 
On neatly printed cards of black and red, 

Piled up in cases, down the floor extend; 

Four windows shoulder through the white-washed walls, 
Whereby the sunlight on the dusty floor 
And littered tables to the restless door 

From morn to night perpetually crawls. 

Above the desk, implacable, immune 

From all the little hates which stir the place, 
Sardonically with barren, sphinx-like face 

A clock beats out the hours from noon till noon. 

No rest nor respite in the changing room — 
The door perpetually swings to and fro. 
Perpetually the students come and go. 

Perpetually the clock ticks on like doom. 

Behind the desk stand the librarians, 

Bleak women, spare and angular and thin. 
Impersonal as God or Death, and in 

Their eyes and on each mask-like countenance 

Sits changeless irony to watch your whim. 

You ask for Shakespeare, and no more, no less 

Than if an equal fervor you express 
For something dull and dead, you get of him. 

[25] 



GARGOYLES 



They pile the centuries like building blocks, 
And nest dead Csesar with a magazine; 
Indecently, behind an office screen 

They watch the masters numbered up like stocks. 

Levelling all things in a catalog, 

They yield, and now withhold, imperial kings 
From any giggling girl that blithely rings 

For pilots in her intellectual fog. 

To sport with dead men as these women do — 
Is it so strange they look a little mad? 
Is it so strange they look profoundly sad, 

And life is subtly comic to their view? 

They look above the foolish ways of men, 
Cosmic and elemental things; their eyes 
Inscrutably are old and very wise. 

I think I shall behold that look again. 

For if, being dead, I walk the dead men's way 
Far on the windy prairies of the night. 
And suddenly within a shaft of light 

I meet the triune Fates who watch us play, 

The awful faces will not look so strange 

Of those with lips compressed who see us strain, 
Their eyes sardonic with a world of pain, 

Contemptuous of the little rooms we range. 

Contemptuous and pitiful of man's 

Interminable quest, those goddesses — 

What will they be — what are they more or less 

Than all eternity's librarians? 

[26] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



THE PROFESSOR MUSES 
(Physics Lecture Room — Before Class) 

I am afraid, O Lord, I am afraid! . . . 

These instruments so curiously formed, 

This dynamo and motor, that machine 

Cunning to grasp and hold with delicate hands 

Your chainless lightnings. . . . Lord, I am afraid 

Here in the empty silence of my room! 

This lecture hall is oddly like a mouth, 
Myself the tongue in it, myself the voice 
Shrill, thin, across these empty chairs — how queer, 
How skeleton-like appear these empty chairs! 
Blank walls, blank platform (ineffectual things) 
And bleak, bare windows where the startled day 
On tiptoe stands, too lovely to come in. . . . 
A mouth it seems, a maw, huge, grim, and fated 
Some day to close and crush me! 

Lord, Lord, Lord 
Am I the thing the daylight falters from. 
Spinning my dusty web of dusty words 
To catch the plunging star we call the world. 
Hanging it so a period? O fool. 
That spider-like weaves cosmic theories 
In gossamer nets to trap the universe. 
Spun but to tear a thousand tattered ways 
And hang on every lilac if a girl, 
A red-lipped, shallow, care-free Freshman girl 
Laugh at the sallies of a boy! 

[27] 



GARGOYLES 



Afraid! . . . 
Problems of sound and light, of light and sound, 
Experiments, materials, theories. 
The laws of motion, problems of sound and light. 
Problems of sound and light. . . . 

And presently 
A gong will ring here like a doomsday bell 
And through these doors, fresh winds that shake the woods, 
Sons of the wind and daughters of the dawn, 
Eternal, joyous, unafraid comes youth. 
Youth from a million colored realms of joy. 
Youth storming up the world with flying hair 
And laughter like a rose-red deluge spilled 
Down dawn-lit heavens burning all the sea! 

Problems of light and sound! . . . Why, what care 

they. 
These bright-eyed Chloes of our later date 
For theories of sound, themselves the sound — 
Themselves the light that brightens all the day? 

Round every corner flits a flying foot. 
Alluring laughter shaken fancy-free 
In silver bells that break upon the air. . . . 
Evoe — evoe! Pan and the nymphs! With lips 
Parted and sparkling eyes the young men follow. 
Follow the swift-foot, laughter-loving nymphs 
Whose eye-lids hold the world ! Problems of light. 
Problems of light — I am sick of light and sound! 

Youth storming up the world ! Hot, eager youth, 
Youth with a question ever on its lips 

[28] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



Impatient of the answer, youth with eyes 

Implacable, remorseless, passionless, 

Crying, "I thirst divinely — quench my thirst!" 

Crying, "I thirsted and ye helped me not!" 

And brushing past me! Amperes, dynamos. 

Questions of voltage, coils, transformers, watts. 

Shall these things touch them, teach them to be wise. 

Temperate, noble? Surely greater texts 

Lie in the lips and laughter of young girls 

Who look at me with pity scarce-concealed 

And curious wonder — me the dusty spider. 

Spinning my ageless web in this bare room, 

While scarcely do their eager tongues hold off 

From sparkling speech. O Lord, I am afraid! 

For when I think to have them, they elude me. 

And when I guess it not, then have I taught — 

Teach me, O Lord, and strengthen me — Thou knowest 

I am afraid and weak ... I am afraid! 



[29] 



GARGOYLES 



PHONOLOGY 

Through dusty windows streamed the sun 

Into the sombre class-room; 

The students at yellow tables 

Sat yawning, half-asleep. 

And behind his desk in partial gloom 

The learned professor. 

His face a ghastly yellow in the light, 

Droned dully through his lecture 

Of Anglo-Saxon phonology, 

The rules for umlaut. 

The sacred laws of change; 

How ae breaks into ea and how j 

Geminates a consonant. 

" . . . the first exemplified in ' beahgifa,' 

Line two, word two, in your text 

Of the Battle at Brunanburh. ..." 

"Beahgifa!" 
Ring-giver! 

Athelstan, king and lord of earls, 
Athelstan and his brother also, 
Edmund the atheling, 
Battling at Brunanburh, 
Battling with Anlaf for 
Crown and kingdom! 

I saw them battling, I saw other battles 
Fought by the wild, gray sea! 

[301 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



I saw the mist swirl and the day-candle rise 

Bloodless out of the icy waters, 

The lonely ship-way! 

Against the crash and clang of billows breaking 

I heard the sword-play 

Of warriors battling, 

The gnarr of battle-ax. 

Grind of steel 

By the gloomy waves! 

I heard the wild scream of the startled sea-mew rising, 

The snap of broken spears, 

The crack of shields of linden-wood shattering; 

And dimly in the mist 

Strode forward 

Trampling the dead. 

Gigantic warriors. 

Blood-red from wrist to shoulder, shouting grimly 

An ancient war-song! 

It was night. 

A screaming raven made the stars wink with his wings. 

And through the frore moonlight 

Across the sea 

Rode the Valkyries, 

Daughters of Wodan, 

With helmets of steel and 

Glistening byrnies 

On coal-black chargers 

The fair war-maidens 

Rode from the slaughter-field, 

Swifter than song. 

Shouting shrilly, 

[311 



GARGOYLES 



Homeward hastening 

Straight o'er the whale-road. 

The icy waves. 

Down from each saddle-bow dangles a dead man, 

Valhalla's hero. 

Shrilly their song flies 
Over the frosty sea, 
Shrilly they scream 
Above the waves' bellow. 

They vanished, the wild horses and the wilder maidens; 

A raven croaked in the sky, 

The wind sang mournfully across 

The shuddering sea, 

And once in the heavens the hammer of Thor 

Sharply split the thunder. 

But below the sea and the screaming sea-mew. 

Below the shout of the fierce Valkyries, 

Below the war-songs of the men. 

Below the sword-play 

I heard an endless sound, a dull, dead droning — 

It grew distinct again. 

It was the learned professor plodding on 

Through the sacred laws of Grimm, 

Grammatical change. 

And the mystic virtues of h. 



[32] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



TERM' PAPER IN ENGLISH 37* 

{Chaucer and Cressid) 

" This Diomede, as bokes us declare. 
Was 171 his nedes prest and corageous " 

One windless afternoon near Acheron 

Came Cressid lightly through a gray-green field 

With billowing poppies starred. There Chaucer stood 

Hard by the shadowy river. Where she passed 

Her ankles stirred the little leaves to speak 

A sibilant, rustling word that ran before, 

And Chaucer heard and knew. Him Cressid hailed 

As unobtrusively he turned away: 

" Ho ! Geoffrey Chaucer — poet Geoffrey — Dan ! 

Sweet sir, sweet bard, O sweetest anything 

That stays your feet. What — not discourteous? 

Nay, look not sourly, Dan. Your Alisoun 

May scold till Time runs down and dies of her, 

But I — I thought you knew me better, Geoffrey. 

Cressid's no gossip out of Bath! Be friends — 

You liked me once before your pious cant 

And thrifty whine of ' Crist foryeve my giltes, 

Endytinges of wordly vanitees,' 

In which — God wot — you counted me. Stuff, straw, 

Stools to reach heaven on and save yourself 

From imminent damnation. Lies, lies, lies — 

Else how were you set with me in this field 

* 37. Chaucer. — Rapid reading and discussion of his works. Primarily 
for graduate students. Prerequisite: English 28. Mj. {Catalog of the Col- 
leges and Graduate Schools). 

[33 1 



GARGOYLES 



By yonder river bound? H\'}^oorisy 

W'hicli bought you favor with that sickly prude, 

Your ^•i^tuous Aleestis, will not move 

The boundaries of Orcus! 

"'I wol biwayle 
The harm of hem that stode m heigh degree!' 
Yes — and your prioress lisps her tale in heaven 
Until the ears of God grow sick of her, 
While you. her poet, ^■i^tuous Geotfrey Chaucer, 
That \\-rote her down, companion me in hell. 
!Me. Geoffrey, whom you helped to damn with speech 
Smoother than fawning in my uncle's mouth. 
(Y'ou first, that de\'il Shakespeare afterward.) 
Xay. do not smile so. 

"Chaucer, I'll be cahu — 
Cool — I was ever cool. You called me so 
In that first temple-meeting and the last 
Sweet night when Diomed had his will of me. 
Sweet .^ God, how sweet! Xo sanctimony, Geoffrey! 
Are we not garnered to the thin -lipped dead.' 
Xo prude may scorn me here. Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet 
So like a taunting wren I'll prick their hate 
With mj' one crj' of Diomed, my sweet. 

"Was ever such a lad, sir poet.' Limbed 
Squarer than Troy and bastioned with great arms 
Whose muscle, twisting in its sun-brown sheath, 
Half-seemed tlie snake that slew Laokoon 
Long after. What a god he walked! "NMiy. War 
Was nought to Diomed in his pride of bronze, 
And lady Venus might mistake the two. 
Deserting Mars his bed. X'o puling boy, 
X'o carpet-knight to falter, pale and swoon 

[S4] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



Because the wind blew sea-ward, was not east. 
Was strong, was early, was not early, late — 
Not such was Diomed. He knew the way 
Men woo their women, and my heart was his 
When first he met me riding out of Troy. 

"You smile? What letter? — Shame on you and shame! 

What letter, Geoffrey? . . . Geoffrey, look at me — 

My golden hair yet golden in the dusk, 

My lips, my eyes — why, Helen hated them 

For bending Hector to a woman's boon. 

And Paris, — nay, that's blabbing! See my throat 

Still snowy in the gloom that slides across 

This sunless meadow — breast and queenly arm: 

My eyes — you called them clear. Look, Chaucer, look 

Am I not yet angelically fair? 

Could such a woman play at dice wnth faith? 

Besides, you called me virtuous. Am I 

Not virtuous still? 

"Ah, Chaucer, Master Chaucer, 
You have known women in your day, you rogue! 
Cecilia Chaumpayne! Does that recall 
No kisses to that elvish face of yours? 
And your release from her ambiguous 
De rapiu meo — now you wince and frown ! 
Well, cry you quits. If you may change your wife, 
Your shrew Philippa for a country wench 
Fresh as spring daisies in your Kentish fields. 
Might I not change for better coin a worse? 
Trade a foul uncle — how I hated him ! 
Faugh, what a fool I was. 'And would I dance 
And was his mistress here' — I, day by day. 
Thus dutifully fawning on his smile, 

[35] 



GARGOYLES 



His senile jests and whispering lecherous, 
And last, that crown of jests ! I could have sunk 
These fair, white, kissing fingers in his throat. 
And did not! 

"Dan, why should I be forbid 
Between a manly lover and a boy 
To make a woman's choice? My uncle Pandar, 
That cousined me and cheated me and laughed, 
My uncle Pandar being Troilus' friend, 
Who would not quit that self-same Troilus, 
Though he were Mars and Launcelot in one? 
Might I not right mistakes? Geoffrey, they were 
Strewn in my life like pretty maids in Greece, 
And if in the full hey-day bloom of spring 
I played a while, does playing time forbid 
My flinging youth aside when once I met 
Reality in love? Such law were shame! 

"Ah yet — ah heaven! Ah help me, Master Chaucer! 

I think I loved him once, my Troilus! 

He was so princely and so passionate. 

So loving-timid and so beautiful, 

And love in him was like a lonely flame 

Lighted upon a secret altar stone 

That else had known no worship. . . . 

"Oh, the pain 
To wander in these olive fields and know 
My name is driven forever down the years 
Linked with light loving and with wantonness ! 
Would I had died before I left my porch 
In windy Troy — before my father fled, 
A traitor, to the Greeks! O noble race. 
Father and child and uncle! . . . 

[36] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



"You smile again 
But now your smile is summer through the snow. 
If you had laughed — O Troilus! — I have talked 
With one of your good women, though less good 
Than I, the wanton Cressida. She told 
Her way of cheating shame. Had I been wise! 
Sir poet, would an asp not look as well 
Upon this breast as hers? You turn? 

"God grant 
Many merry hours with Cecilia, 
And that you meet not with your shrewish wife!" 



[37] 



GARGOYLES 



Lo! I have worshiped beauty all my days: 
The stars have been as lovers and the night, 
Fairer than thought. Trees, pictures, music, light, 
Old, crumbling sunsets and the lilac haze 
On summer-shadowy hills — these were a maze 
Of loveliness, with hushed and sandalled feet 
To wander, pausing where a brook was sweet. 
Or in lush meadows marvelling to gaze. 

And I have known high battles with the wind 

And felt the mystic tang of wet, kissed lips, 

And prayed at dawn. Alas! That these should pass! 

Lecturing on poets to a college class, 

Behold, I aid the Progress of the Mind — 

O why should beauty suffer such eclipse.'* 



[38] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



This is the crown they sought, the height they won: 
After long years of travail, weary waits 
Through the dim night before unopening gates 
Of joy; or in waste lands, by star or sun 
Closing the foolish circle they had run, 
To seek escape; to know what tragic states 
The mind puts on; at last, slipped by the fates. 
To climb the rock-rim toward some larger sun; 

There on the bleak horns of the mountain scree 

To seize thin harps and in the icy moon 

To strain their throats and sing ! — This is their fame, 

After long years: grown peaceable and tame, 

In text-books caught, to make yon fresh-faced loon 

Yawn o'er his reading in my English Three. 



[391 



GARGOYLES 



O wild and free upon the lawless hills 
My soul is up against the embattled hours! 
The harping of the stars descends in showers 
Upon me, and the moon her music spills. 
O Sightless ! Dweller by the shouting rills 
And planetary rivers what impowers, 
Resistless, thee to crown me with thy flowers. 
To set my feet upon thy golden sills? 

Me that was safe amid the hollow vales 
To make confederate with each bird that flies, 
Each wind and sun? O Power, was it wise? 
The stars are noisy on my trembling ears. 
Beneath my feet the golden threshold fails. 
Thy hills are steep, thy flowers too rich for tears. 



[40] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



Master of arts ! Diploma tight in hand. 
Hood on his back and triumph on his face, 
He drops benevolent smiles upon the place 
Which taught him what he does not understand. 
His arguments, 'tis true, have nearly spanned 
The missing plays of Ford, the date and case 
Of Piers the Plowman, Spenser's birth, the race 
Of Layamon. He knows. His air is bland. 

Master of arts and ignorant of all. 
He climbs another archway to his goal, 
The doctorate. His eyes are bad, his soul 
Is dubious, but his mind — his mind is good: 
Where twenty thousand facts are piled like wood. 
Will Shakespeare's secret lies at beck and call. 



1411 



GARGOYLES 



We study Marlowe. Virgins, not unwise, 

Some thirty-seven, seek my lecture room, 

Poise pen and wait. There's none but wears the bloom 

And signet of love's April in her eyes. 

Questioned, their voices trill me out replies 

Some boy should have 'twixt kisses. Now I speak, 

Their pens record the wisdom which they seek 

To store against the day I catechize. 

We study Marlowe, {Beautiful and young 

Leander, whom divine Musaeus sung 

Dwelt at Ahydosl), comment in our text 

On style and influence, skirt the unpleasant edge 

Of liberal phrases, shy at kisses, hedge — 

We study Marlowe. We do Shakespeare next. 



42 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



A rag of sunset flaps my window pane 

With curious insistence; memoried trees 

Stand up like solemn eastern devotees; 

The empty campus floods with purple grain 

Behind them where they pray; one cloud in vain 

Threatens the moon, on dim and ghostly seas 

Of silent weather lost; day's emptied lees, 

Spilled through the west, tinge heaven a wine-red stain. 

Papers are marked. The quarter's past and done. 

Two sparrows, chattering, are very loud 

Where yesterday I heard a happy crowd 

At graduation. Now the belated sun 

Drops swiftly, and the vesper air is bowed 

With weight of growing stars. The quarter's done. 



43 



GARGOYLES 



"HEU AMOR! QUAM DULCIS IN UNIVERSITATIBUS 
EST TUA MEMORIA!" 

I am weary of institutions! 

Huddling together; jostling in the streets; the cutting off of 
all that is not symmetrical; the shoving down of what 
does not conform; 

Rules, customs, police, Y. M. C. A. workers, armies, generali- 
ties, mass, books, lectures, colleges — of these I am very 
weary. 

Also of college professors, perturbedly striving to fit life into 
patterns, afraid of what can not be measured; 

Running hurriedly in the first soft rains to pin labels upon 
blades of grass and the young leaves; 

Dissatisfied because the blades grow; complaining that the 
wind drifts among the roses and disorders them : 

For they wish to number the petals of the roses, and 
the careless opulence of spring will not allow them; they 
desire to pin the clouds together with pins, and catch 
the winds in springes clumsily set for them. 

Their lives are measured into lines, facts, recitations, theses, 
proofs, and what does not agree with the measure is 
cast aside. 

144] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



They have made their measures into gods to whom they make 
human sacrifice. 

I say that hfe is not a thing put into boxes in a dark room 
wherein college professors go up and down desperately 
seeking what they have put away: it is their own souls 
they have put away. 

The soul is like a wild bird caught in the net of the fowler — 
how many yards is it long? 

The eyes of children haunt me with grave beauty; the wind 
cries out in my ear; the hair of a woman is wrapped 
around my heart, and they can not tell me why. 

I ain very weary of them. 

Therefore I will go up into the mountains and hide my face 
among a cloud of stars! 

I will talk familiarly with the moon, my brother, and with 
my elder brother, the wind. 

I will wander for a time under the cedar trees which have a 
certain secret thing to say to me : I think it concerns my 
beloved; 

Or I will lean to hear the talking together of the clouds. 

For perchance my beloved will pass by along the stars, 
my love that is whiter than the white moon for beauty 
and like the shining of the early stars. 
[45] 



GARGOYLES 



Her breasts are like clouds with the moon folded among 
them; her hair gives forth the fragrance of the cedars; 

She has rested one hand upon the mane of the Lion; she has 
trod out the burning of Jupiter with her feet. 

And because the wind is a harp across the mountain tops, my 
beloved and I will kiss and cling together like foolish 
children, until Orion shall laugh to see our love. 

The Star of my Desire shines above the mountain tops; I will 
go up to her breast; I will forget utterly the professors 
and their measures. 

In the great spaces of the sky, 

Where only the little leaves that are like a million tongues 
can see us, there we will build us a lodge and dwell in it 
together, 

A lodge of sapphire; of jacynth and beryl and green jade and 
burning gold. 

The sill of the doorway shall be a moonbeam; the rafters, light- 
ning; the windows of the lodge shall be stretched dew; 
the roof of the house of my beloved will I nail together 
with stars. 

my beloved, the winds will clap their hands together to 

see us two go into the house! 

1 am weary of institutions! — Give me, O God, my beloved 

and my desire ! 

[46] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



"EACH STUDENT IS ASSIGNED TO AN ADVISER—" 

I talked yesterday with a college president who told me that 
his advisory system was a good one, saving the stu- 
dents from many errors. 

He explained to me the working of the system: how, when a 
student did not know whether to study biology or 
chemistry, I was to help him choose between biology 
and chemistry. . . . 

How shall I know whether to advise for chemistry or for 
biology? 

The secret wants of the soul; fugitive and furtive demands; 
the appetites bridled and unbridled; 

Hunger sweet in the mouth of youth for what is perfect and 
beautiful; 

How shall I know whether biology or chemistry satisfies that 
hunger? 

One finds God in cyanide of potassium, and another finds Him 
in Shelley, and sneers because he has found Him there; 

And to one man biology is the mouthing of harlots, laughter 
like the crackling of thorns beneath a pot, unmitigated 
and obscene laughter; 

[47 1 



GARGOYLES 



But his brother can not enter the laboratory without fear; 
he could kneel down before a bottle of prussic acid and 
worship, except that he is ashamed; his eyes are dazzled; 
the blast furnace is like the choiring of a million angels, 
and the formula for magnesium, terrible as an army with 
banners, contains the glory of the Lord. 

And still others (and I suspect my freshmen are among them) 
find Him in the kisses of young girls; they dream of the 
breasts of virgins, and laugh aloud because of the sweet- 
ness of their dream; 

One man I know found the glory of God in a football suit, 
and another, in peddling milk to earn his way through 
college. 

I think I will go back and tell the president that I do not 
know how to advise that chemistry or biology be taken. 

Seeing that I do not know enough to advise with my own soul. 



48] 



UNIVERSITY SKETCHES 



TO A CERTAIN SCIENTIST 

Come, my brother, let us sit down and reason profitably 
together: 

To you the soul is like a barracks full of soldiers in red coats, 
who, if they could only be got to drill together, would 
move up and down and back and forth in companies 
and squads forever. 

But I say to you, the soul is no such thing. 

It is a little room and a great room. 

In the ante-chamber there are perhaps one or two soldiers: I 
do not know. 

But the great room beyond is like a deserted chamber, dusty 
and vast, with cobwebs hanging from the walls and grey- 
ness over the window-panes. 

It is haunted by ghosts that go up and down and gibber 
together; it is filled with bats that squeak among the 
rafters; it is filled full of faces, music, dreams. 

Deeds done and deeds undone; kisses that were given, and 
kisses — O mystery ! — that were not given. 

Companies of masks go about in it continually; they dissolve 
and fade like clouds, and there are always masks behind 
them, and behind these, still other masks. 

[49 1 



GARGOYLES 



Or the soul is like flowing water among caverns: who can dip 
up a goblet of that water? 

It is a kaleidoscope of sounds, shapes, desires, lusts, hungers, 
sins, affections, mysteries, thoughts, creeds, appetites, 
all jumbled together like a mirror broken into many 
pieces. 

The soul is not known to any man, nor is it known to God. 

Why, my brother, do you not see through the door of the 
ante-chamber into the mystery beyond? 



[50] 



CHICAGO 

IN FACTORY TOWN 

What service is this in Factory Town? 

Four cheap candles that sputter and blink 

Over a pineboard coffin; an altar 

Gilded and painted, and Mary o'erhead 

Gazing blankly at that low bed; 

Three wooden saints who nod and wink, 

Sardonic and silent — Mark, Luke and John 

In tinsel and crimson looking on. 

And a smug, smooth priest with his psalter. 

They leer down — 
Dumb saints — on a funeral in Factory Town. 

What bumps through the streets in Factory Town? 

A shabby hearse and a shabbier horse 
And one hired cab comes jolting after; 
In the hearse lies the coffin that holds the dead. 
And wan paper roses, white and red, 
(The cab was got for the priest, of course) 
And round them the people traffic and trade, 
The trolley cars clang and the little parade 
Moves on amid clamor and laughter. 

Thus goes down 
The funeral procession through Factory Town. 
[51] 



GARGOYLES 



And what place is this in Factory Town? 

This is the place which'lodges the dead, 

A bleak, bare lot by the river, 

Where wooden crosses push out of the sand 

To guard these mounds from a vandal hand — 

And that's a new grave, and prayers are said 

Hurriedly by the priest, and dust 

Thrown upon that which was more than dust. 

And lives (he says) forever. 

Lowered down 
To such graves are bodies in Factory Town. 

And who is it's dead in Factory Town? 

Nobody's dead of much account, 

Only Anna, the Croatian maiden, 

Who worked for Isaacs, the garment man, 

Hard and fast as a woman can, 

And she died of consumption. She didn't amount 

To anything much ! — too stupid. (She came 

To America because the name 

Promised relief to the laden !) — 

Don't look down. 
For no one will miss her in Factory Town. 

Well, why do you speak of Factory Town? 

Only for this : In her Croatian home 
When the work is done and the village 
Rests in the evening, the peasants sigh 
And talk of Anna enviously. 
And say that by now she must be some 
[62] 



CHICAGO 

Wealthy lady, all done with toil. 

And wish they were she, and free from the soil, 

And through with the tax and the tillage! 

(They'll come down 
In time, to be buried in Factory Town !) 



ON SEEING LORADO TAFT'S "THE 
SOLITUDE OF THE SOUL" 

Of what avail, of what avail 

To touch with hands, to touch with lips? 

Behold our faces, they are pale, 

And from our eyelids slips the veil 

And from our souls the covering slips. 

Ye are alone when nearest you 
A figure presses, eyes afire, 
A mouth that drinks of honey-dew, 
A face to shape the world anew, 
A spirit flaming with desire. 

Ye are alone and soreliest tried 
When supple youth puts manhood on. 
And this sad woman by his side 
Who was, but is not now, a bride 
Kisses and finds the rapture gone. 

And what avails the hands ye pressed? 
We also clasp our hands in stone. 
We, too, were lovers breast to breast — 
Ah, nearest we were loneliest; 
Now we are nearer, being alone. 
[531 



GARGOYLES 



PLOWS 

There were a thousand men in the factory; 

Some sweltered over forges, 

Others above great emory wheels 

Sent showers of sparks flying. 

With dirty face and sweat-stained shirt 

A workman passed by me and grinned; 

He was puUing a truck piled high with plow-shares. 

After him came another man, 

Naked to the waist, 

And on his grimy skin in little globules 

The sweat was standing. 

The roar of the emery wheels deafened me 

So that I could not hear what the manager was saying. 

But later in the office 

He told me proudly 

That his factory contained the latest devices 

For the making of plows. 

THE WRECKING OF THE HOUSE 

I passed where workmen were pulling down a house. 

It was snowing. 

And the soft, remorseful flakes like penitent kisses 

•Sifted into the staring rooms, 

And on the fire-place, indecently exposed, 

Clung desperately 

As a woman clings to an indifferent lover, 

Striving to reawaken in him 

The passion of past days. 

[54] 



CHICAGO 



The bedrooms, too, were visible, 
And the naked playroom 
Where the patter of feet had changed 
To noiseless footfalls of snow. 

Well? . . . 



THE MOVIES 

They sit like shadows in the playhouse dim 

Through half an hour's film of smiles and tears; 

They watch life like a shadow flow. 

That can not speak, but only walks and feels; 

One thing they do not know: 

Within the darkened playhouse of the years, 

Themselves like moving pictures come and go 

Upon the film of Time in seven reels 

For entertainment of the seraphim. 



THE SPINNER 

Before a doorway in the city sat 
A single spinner spinning in the sun, 
And in her eyes I looked. . . . 

I saw the toiling women of the world, 
I heard the silly laughter of young girls, 
I saw the sunken breasts of motherhood, 
The mumbling mouths of cynical, toothless crones. 
Young wives with weary faces and wet hair, 
And painted women beckoning men on. 
[55] 



GARGOYLES 



I saw the teeming tenements, 

The smothering sweatshops and the flimsy lofts. 

I smelled the smoke of ruthless factories, 
I heard the whirr of myriad machines 
Droning a grim, monotonous cradle-song, 
And to the power of that moaning song 
Ever new women bowed their heads and slept, 
And ever purred the humming grimlier on. 

I saw the bitter, pale economist 

Throw down his book and hide his eyes and weep; 

I saw the worker in the settlement 

Pity — and tire — and grow indifferent. 

I saw the legislatures trading spoils, 
I heard the preachers preaching useless gods, 
I entered schools disputing o'er dead kings, 
I saw the people rushing through the streets. 

And then I heard a single woman's cry 
That shivered to the unseen, stricken stars 
And slid along a sunbeam up to God. 

And there was silence in the restless streets, 

And silence in the purring factories, 

And silence in the crowded, flimsy lofts, 

And only the relentless shuddering sea 

Moaned and crept 

A little nearer to the restless streets, 

A little nearer to the factory walls. . . . 

A little nearer to the tenements. . . . 

Nay, I had but looked into the eyes 
Of one lone spinner spinning in the sun. 
166] 



CHICAGO 



AUDIENCES 

Within, the dazzling lights are hushed and low. 

The music sinks to a faint breathlessness; 

There is a rustling of a woman's dress, 
A child cranes forward, listening; row on row 
Of strained, exalted faces seem to glow 

Like white flames in the dusk with sharp distress, 

Beholding Juliet dead; the aching press 
Of pain stabs the dry throat and will not go. 

Without, swung in illimitable space. 

Across the soundless stage the planet runs; 
Gigantically like shadows in the waste 

And silence of the night, the high gods lean, 
Shoulder to shoulder, peering on the scene 
Across the footlights of the spinning suns. 



ECONOMICS 

Dead! 

Dead where the greasy river winds. 

Tainted with filth that a factory grinds 

Out of the cattle skins — 

Dead! 

With bleared wide eyes and swollen hands 
And hair of matted slime, 
A sneer and a smile on his weak-willed face 
Like one who had conquered Time 
1671 



GARGOYLES 



And wrested the Secret in far-off lands 
From Death who withheld it a space, 
Dressed in coarse shirt and tattered coat — 
Briefly, that's how he looked afloat 
As he drifted down past the ships 
And the wondering men who trod 
The wharves by the reeking slips. 

"Who's dead?" "What's happened?" The rumor ran, 
"Only a common working man 
Floating dead in the stream," 

Strange ! 

Didn't he know of the freer range 
The century gives to a man? 
He certainly knew ! In the present age 
Labor and Capital and Land 
Divide the returns, hand and hand, 
And his wages were just and true, 
Tut — this will never do — 
Thus no economists scheme! 
Didn't he know we are happier 
(Proved so by rule, and we must be) 
In this age of machinery? 

Ask of the mocking lips 
Which know the answer in God ! 
Ask him there as he grimly lies 
Down by the grimy slips, 
Taunting the burning, brazen skies, 
Ask if his life was any lighter, 
Ask if his toil was any slighter 
Because of machinery. 

[58 1 



CHICAGO 

Horribly, horribly dead, 

With the river filth on his head. 

Clammy with noisome ooze — and dead, 

Always horribly, horribly dead! 

They fear him now who hired him of old. 

And shrink away lest the swollen lips 

Shriek in laughter there by the ships. 

Laughing fearfully, fearfully. 

Nay, touch him not lest ye shiver 

The frail, thin walls of the flesh — touch not! 

Better to let him drift and rot, 

Better to let him find a spot 

Alone beneath the sluggish tide 

And let him be buried the way he died 

With the stream for a winding sheet. 

In the vaporous marshes let him rest 

In the grave he picked and chose. 

He never could sleep were he buried where 

The factory whistle blows 

And the plodding line of toilers goes 

To grind their lives out, lest 

He arise to work in the dim, dead dawn 

And fleet like a vulture across the lawn 

To his place in the tannery there. . . . 

Let him be buried anywhere. 

Anywhere, anywhere, save 

Your cemetery he shall not share — 

God will pick him a grave. 



59 



GARGOYLES 



INSOMNIA 

Long silences, interminably long, 
Mixed with an insane shrilling in the ears. . . . 
Did I give Nesmith. . . . what a fool to jump 
Because a window shakes! Drip, drip, drip, drip — 
The night has funny noises ! Did I give . . . 
God ! What if hell were like this ! In the drift 
Of black across the eyes small globes of light 
Irregularly swing like crazy ships — 
I wonder why they're made so. Anyway 
These the tired mind must calculate and note 
Whether they come on arcs, or leave in twos. . . . 
Did I give Nesmith ord — Nesmith be damned ! . . . 
Somewhere with leering fingers sleep looks out 
Among the swaying curtains of the dark — 
In this room somewhere — somewhere. Did I give 
Nesmith the order for that cedar deal? . . . 
That fat clerk's face again! Bang, bang, bang, bang 
The blood beats in the temples. Counting sheep. 
That's a cheap lie for fools — they turn to books, 
Fragments of conversation, faces, streets, 
Newspapers, — newspapers — Tribune . . . Did I give 
Nesmith the order — Hell, of course I did ! 
If I could only sleepl I used to sleep. 
Once in another world. It isn't fair 
To take away my sleep here in the dark! 
Let's see, that cedar order went to Nesmith; 
Tomorrow there's that Canada affair 

First thing, then Jenkins, then the freight-bills, then . . . 
What's the best way to calm old Jenkins down? 

1601 



CHICAGO 



I hate these whiskered chaps Hke Chester Arthur, 

Think they're Beau Brittels — Brimmel — Bram — oh hell! 

Are scrawny bankers always made so tight? 

Crack! — That's the shutter — or the window shade. . . 

The first car leaves at three, too. I could sleep 

If this fool nervousness would only stop. . . . 

Blood in your ears and twitches in your feet. 

And silence like a blanket striped with light. 

Did I give Nesmith? — Yes, of course I did. 

I must sleep — I can't stand this, I must sleep — 

Must sleep — must — must — must — must — must 



61 



GARGOYLES 



THE MECHANIST 

I made a trap to catch the stars. 

And built machines to move the moon; 

The wind and rain I caught in jars, 

And counted twelve at every noon. 

Six levers were for night and day. 

And six for twilight and for dawn. 

But when I tried to find a way 

Of carving roses — they were gone. 

Their petals blew among the chains 

Whereby I caused the clouds to wheel, 
And drifted, like still scarlet rains. 

Above my enginries of steel. 
I brushed them off; I drew my lines 

About the wheatfields and the corn. 
Shaping my vast, extreme designs 

To ripen them ere it was morn. 

And while my subtle pulleys whirled 

Against the growth that would be day's, 
I hurried where the sea-streams swirled 

On incommunicable ways; 
I caught them in a net at dawn, 

And then returned to reap my corn — 
A snow of rose-leaves hid the lawn. 

And choked my crop — and it was morn ! 



62] 



DEAD CHILDREN 



DEAD CHILDREN 

I meant to marry you until She came. . . . 

Do you remember what we talked about? 

Women, and books, and how your eyes would flame 

At sundown as a lantern flickers out; 

I said your soul was quiet, like a song. . . . 

We planned our house. Do you remember how 

We laughed the day I got the stairway wrong? 

And do you like Circassian walnut now? 

You spoke of children we should have. The hours 

Stood listening and your whole face grew sweet. . . 

What are they now, those little babes of ours. 

Dust at our doorways blown along the street? 



[63] 



GARGOYLES 



ENIGMA 

I said, I do not need your lips, 

The raspberries are red. 
And though your heart is wild and free, 

I like the wind, I said. 

And for your hair, beside the road 
The brown-eyed Susan grows; 

Your kiss I think I can replace 
With some neglected rose. 

Your soul was filled with peace, and yet 
One noon beside a stream 

That loiters through a clover field, 
I found the world a dream. 

I said I did not need your love. 

Having wind and flowers and skies; 

I did not know the corn-flower then 
Was bluer than your eyes. 



[64] 



A SONG OF BUTTE 



A SONG OF BUTTE 

I am the city demoniac! Desolate, mournful, infernal 
Dweller apart among and upon the amazing hills. 
Seen of the poet of hell, I am she, the dark, the unvernal 
Cybele, wearing my crown of fantastic mines and mills! 
My breasts are girdled with iron; and under the place of my 

feet 
Is copper, and over my head in a green and copper sky 
A sulphurous sun goes by and I find his going sweet. 
My sisters have many jewels — is any so strange as I? 

I am the secret of night, transformed from an evil thing 
To a dream of passionate hope ! A blur and cluster of stars, 
A galley of tremulous light, I lift from my anchor and swing 
Outbound for the farthest ports that lie past the lighthouse 

Mars! 
I splinter the darkness with glory, I burn like fire on the hills, 
I am Caerleon and Usk! I am the hurt of the moon! 
Because of my lonely beauty the soul takes thought and fills 
Till I cause the pulse to leap that I stayed with horror at noon. 

I am the city cast out, harlot and common scold 
Shrilling loud in the street, the taunter of all ye love. 
Holding what others scorn, scorning what others hold. 
Flaunting the vulgar shame my sisters are reticent of. 
I am the mistress of many, untrue and adulterous queen, 
Naked, tawdry, Priapian! Lo, and what sin is mine.? 
They who have kissed farewell on my painted lips, have seen 
My sisters are hypocrite souls that blush for their lust and 
wine. 

[651 



GARGOYLES 



I am also the scoflFer, the tester, the prover of life! 
This one comes to me pure and I make him dirty and mean. 
This one comes to me lewd, and forth from my iron strife 
Joyous he goes and proud, and clean as a bride is clean ! 

sisters, look to your courts! Can ye look and say as much? 
How doth it stand with you? Have ye builded over a fen. 
That your white-faced, pasty brood shrinks back from my 

hurt and smutch? 
They that go down in my bowels and grip me are not as your 
men! 

1 am likewise the challenge, the mixing of many in one : 
Lustful, reckless, I yield to the urge of life and the slack, 
A myriad races come and beneath my dispassionate sun 

I mix and change and remold and send them, a nation, back; 
Indifferent seeker and spurner, I lure from city and shore 
Italian, negro and Slav. Their foster-mother am I! 
And the man-child tugs at my breast and is nourished and 

knows no more 
The sound of an alien tongue or the heat of a foreign sky! 

I am also the spirit, the city chosen of God, 
Vast and pregnant seeker, aspirer and knower of dreams; 
I that search in the earth for dross go also abroad 
Rousing my sisters that sleep, contented, beside their streams. 
On a riddling quest I go as the ancient mother went — 
My sisters, ye look ashamed when my asking footsteps come, 
But under my breast I bear the answer the Riddler meant: 
I am Democracy's mother! O sisters, why are ye dumb? 



166] 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 
AT EAGLE BLUFF 

From this bold rampart, by eternity 
Thrown up against the slow assaults of change. 
The valley seems unending; stately, slow, 
The labyrinthine river winds along 
The horned bases of the solemn hills; 
Stretches of prairie lie beyond; the fields 
Of wheat and corn for some enormous game 
Form intricate patterns, and the tiny barns 
And nestled houses counters are, and pawns. 
A marsh lies next, a bed of black and green. 
And far across, the blue Wisconsin hills 
Rim up the valley's edge. 

The colors change, 
Slow-shifting back and forth from dark to light 
By acres and by miles. It is the clouds — 
They float like pageants down the shimmering sky. 
Huge galleons of white that sail and sail 
An infinite ocean under cloudy capes 
And walled and misty towns. . . . 

Those are not clouds, 
Those ponderous shapes of white! They are the gods. 
Born on their catafalques of stainless pride 
To some gigantic grave — they are the gods, 
The ancient gods, now mercifully dead. 
[67] 



GARGOYLES 



They did not think to die as they desired, 

Weary with all the bitterness of heaven 

That could not help the waywardness of fools; 

Weary beside, with bitterness of life, 

Life everlasting, life insatiate. 

Life like a slow fire unescapable. 

Burdened with life as men with fear of death. 

Was there no other end for them, with all 
Their thunders and their priests and hecatombs, 
Thus, thus to drift in death before the wind, 
No other end, O unintelligible 
And tongueless gulf of air, no other end? 

Lo! The white-armed, the sea-born Aphrodite, 
Lo ! The curled brow and puzzled frown of Zeus, 
Dead Pallas on her shield — O Wisdom, where. 
Where is thy cunning now? And now Apollo 
Dead on his bier, and yet the sun still shines. 

And who are these on strange and carven barges. 
Gigantic, dim, two-headed, some like dogs 
And some like eagles — Thoth and Ophois 
And Isis and Osiris — they are dead. 
Despite the changeless pyramids, despite 
Karnak and Elephantis and the sands 
That blow round Memnon's statue. 

Viking ships 
Bear after them the raven-guarded Odin, 
Thor with his hammer. Balder and the Noms, 
Their pyres aflame behind them where the sun 
Burns like a death-ship. 

[68] 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



These are almond-eyed 
And many-armed, or brown and hideous, 
Wild deities that to our western ears 
Are named uncouthly — they are dead, and India 
Knows not nor cares, and Ganges through his leagues 
Flows yet untroubled, and the Chinese bells 
Ring, and the lotos blossoms in Japan. 

And lastly comes a crucifix like snow, 

And one upon it whiter than his bier. . . . 

The gods are dead. . . . Only the wind drives on. 

Drives them before it as a flock of sheep. 

The gods are dead; where are the gods? O seek, 

Seek in the upper chambers of the world 

And find them with the never-dying wind. 

It freshens now — the milk-white barges haste. 

Pass and dissolve and fall in summer rain. 



CERTAIN REFLECTIONS AT MIDWAY 

At Midway town, at Midway town 
The dust-white road goes up and down, 
And flashing past and to and fro 
All summer long the autos go. 

They seldom stop at Midway town, — 
The place is small and dead and brown, 
A store, a station and a hall, 
A dozen houses — that is all. 
[69] 



GARGOYLES 



'Tis true, the meadows are as fair 
At Midway town as anywhere, 
And overhead in August skies 
The clouds careen Hke argosies. 

The black-eyed Susans by the way 
Curtsey and dance there every day. 
And from the wheatfields joyously 
I heard the black birds mock at me. 

Surely at Midway one can feel 
At night the cruising planet reel. 
And see in heaven the milky wake 
Of star-dust its propellors make. 

And yet — and yet — at Midway town 
The silver road goes up and down. 
And flashing past and to and fro 
All summer long the autos go. 



[70] 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



When shall we together 

Tramp beneath the sky, 
Thrusting through the weather 
As swimmers strive together, 
You and I? 

How we ranged the valleys, 
Panted up the road, 

Sang in sudden sallies 

Of mirth that woke the valleys 
Where we strode! 

Glad and free as birds are, 
Laughter in your eyes, 
Wild as poets' words are, 
You were as the birds are, 
Very wise. 

Not for you the prison 

Of the stupid town. 
When the winds were risen. 
You went forth from prison, 
You went down, 

Down along the river, 
Dimpling in the rain 

Where the poplars shiver 

By the dancing river, 
And again 

[711 



GARGOYLES 



Climbed the hills behind you 

When the rains were done; 
Only God could find you 
With the town behind you 
In the sun! 

Don't you hear them calling, 
Black birds in the grain, 
Silver raindrops falling 
Where the larks are calling 
You in vain? 

Comrade, when together 
Shall we tramp again 

In the summer weather, 

You and I together. 
Now as then? 



72 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



FROM TREMPEALEAU 

Below, 

The slumbrous flow 

Of waters laden down with sleep 

Beneath their immortality. . . . 

The stream goes by 

Indifferently 

Unto the deep — 

Men, cities, channel, hills, like April rains 

Vanish — the stream remains. 

These solid walls that seem so strong 

Were not, and ere long 

Will not be, and this citadel 

Of rock is, rightly known, 

More evanescent than a song, 

More fleeting than a trumpet blown. 

More wraith-like than Time flown. . . 

OGod, 

What hope.? 

Behold, 

The little scope. 

The life less durable than sod. 

The fingers that too soon grow cold! 

The stream remains. 
Full-breasted and inscrutable, 
And it is well. 

[73 1 



GARGOYLES 



He can not stop His ways remote 

And bow 

Because an ant is crushed beneath your feet; 

His ways are other ways than ours 

Of ampler planets, stranger powers. 

Trouble Him not now 

With talk of pain 

Endured, the stricken throat, 

Lovers that part, 

A heart 

With unintended sorrow bitter-sweet. 

Vex not the Infinite with prattle of the dust! 

He must 

Be busy otherwhere; when we are slain. 

He and the stream remain. 



SUNDAY 

Your Hell and Heaven, what are they? 
I tramp the yellow road today. 
And deep among the grass I see 
The harebells' fairy blasphemy. 

They blow on Sunday as they blow 
On any day in all the row. 
Your Hell and Heaven, what are they.'^ 
/ tramp the yellow road today. 



[74] 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



RAILWAY SKETCHES 



Bunk Cars 



A row of broken box-cars by the track 
Below the water-tower; in the breeze 
A torn, blue curtain flaps uneasily 
In one rough window, and along their side 
A line of garments flutters in the wind. 
The blue smoke, rising, dances elfin-toed 
Upon the rusted stove-pipe, and beyond 
The great white sails of God go slowly by 
Over the rustling hills. . . . 



II 

The Section Crew 

In the chiU wet dawn of a morning in the fall 

When a gray mist lies on the river. 
And the dew-drenched lawn is shrouded in a pall 

And the hooded hills seem to shiver, 
I hear the squeak and the rumble of a door, 

And voices that swell and echo queerly, 
The clatter and the creak of a car lifted o'er 

The tracks and dropped again — nearly. 
[75] 



GARGOYLES 



There's a crash of tools and the odor of a pipe 

Astray on the cool, fresh morning; 
Silence — while the pools of the day grow ripe 

For an overflow of rain; then a warning 
Called from the boss, and the tramp of awkward feet, 

Stiff and chill from the station; 
A car rolls across the bridge with rhythmic beat, 

And the hollow places boom reverberation. 



Ill 

The Depot 

It nestles underneath the dark green hills, 
A doll-house painted red, and past it flies 
The lean, swift limited whose whistle shrills 
In one long sobbing shriek and slowly dies. 

A straw-like arm above the chimney shifts. 
Staccato clickings puncture the still air, 
A thin bell jingles faintly, and in rifts 
Of echoing rock two crows summon to prayer. 



76 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



IV 

An Episode 

Drunken, blear-eyed, shambling, sodden, 
Clothed in rags and greasy-hatted 
Comes a gray old man with dirty 
Iron-gray hair into the depot. 

At the door he stands a moment 

Staring blankly at the wood-stove; 
To the nearest bench he lurches 
Where he sprawls in spineless comfort. 

On the wall a fly -specked placard: 

"Loafing not allowed." The agent 
Leaves his key and swearing softly. 
Kicks the fellow from the station. 



77 



GARGOYLES 



ANENT THE STREET CAR 

Street car? Yah! — Yellow box on wheels 

That bumps and reels 

From Farnam street to Main and back 

On a (sporadic) double track, 

Dusty or chilly — it depends 

On the time of year, and say. 

They're always late — Lord! Anyway, 

Don't talk street car here, my friends! 

Perhaps. . . . 

You ought to sit on people's laps. 
Or kneel against the pane, your nose 
The farthest angle from your toes. 

Street cars? Chariots that run 
From Zanzibar to Babylon 
Past New York and the sapphire bay 
Whereby the sultan's daughters play; 
Magic steeds of gold that fly 
Where polar bears and lions lie 
Hid in the wild 

Somewhat too neatly for a child; 
Enchanted yellow boats that swim 
A hundred miles or maybe ten 
The oceans dim 
Where funny little cities stand 
Just on the edges of the land. 
All ready to fall in (they don't!) 
[78] 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



And full of funny little men 

Who look as if they'd bite — and won't; 

And each man has a tiny shop 

Beneath the tinkly trees. 

All full of gingerbread and pop, 

And drums, and elephants, and carts, 

And dolls, and candy hearts. 

And O, such shiny, shiny seas! 

Street car? Stop! 

Your brains need dusting — try to sneeze ! 



179] 



GARGOYLES 



Climb up with me to Cliffwood and lie down 
Full-length upon the sunsoaked turf, your eyes 
Raised to the dazzling blue where August dies, 
Your head upon your arm — so ! — and the town 
Behind you, while its troubled noises drown 
In that clear gulf of air. The great clouds rise 
In solemn silence up the summer skies, 
And autumn somewhere waits in russet brown. 

Now send your soul through yonder rift of blue 
Among those drifting islands of the sky, 
Where all is quietness. Let summer die! 
What care we, who are borne on radiant wings 
Down depthless fields of hollow air, and through 
The stainless splendor which the summer brings! 



80 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



JUNE 

Between the sun-down and the moon's slow rise 
There came a spirit down the vesper skies 
Full of glad sound and music, and with feet 
Wild and sweet 

Upon the hushed meadows, and her hair 
Darker than midnight air. 

She came with singing, and her voice was wild 
With the joy-hearted laughter of a child, 
Inmixed with tears and sudden prophecies 
Of lovelier eyes 

Than ever yet looked meekly on this earth 
At love's perpetual birth. 

She sang, if singing be to give full throat 

To all shy woodland things that have no note 

Made vocal else — quaint whispers in the grass. 

Moods that pass 

Strangely across the leaves, and old, wise words 

Gossiped among the birds. 

Her eyes were deep and clear and very old, 
Lucent with starlight and with liquid gold. 
And yet a shadow brooding there to screen 
Secrets unseen, 

Fair promises of womanhood to come. 
Now sweetly hid and dumb. 

[81] 



GARGOYLES 



And she was clad in delicate shades of spring, 

The tender inward of a rosebud's wing, 

The timid baby green that early flushes 

In emerald blushes 

On swelling larch-leaves, and the faint-breathed pink 

Anemones do drink. 

Among the solemn-bearded, counsellor trees 
I saw her dancing with a summer breeze, 
Her slender, snowy feet like flashing stars 
Across the bars 

And jetty shadows of the vesper wood, 
Willful and wild in mood. 

And through the starlit silences her singing, 
As though a thousand fairy bells were ringing 
Like little liquid fountains, to my ear 
Sweet and clear. 

Melodiously sweet and clear, outrang, 
And I heard what she sang. 

I heard, but can not tell you what she sang. 

Save that the ancient meadows swiftly sprang 

To melody behind her, and the tongue 

Of each tree rung 

In laughter, and each June-time flower that swells 

Tinkled like elfin bells. 

And as I sprang to catch her and discover 

Whether, indeed, some wood god were her lover 

Who thus made music for her on the lawn. 

She was gone! 

And I alone, and all the woods alone. 

Grew silent as a stone. 

[82] 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



Perchance she fled away to the sunbeams. 

Or in the secret sources of the streams 

Hides, or in silver fountains of the air, 

Or anywhere 

(Who knows?) unsearchable beneath the moon. 

The spirit that was June! 



LYRICS FROM "THE MASQUE OF MARSH AND 

RIVER" 

(Presented at La Crosse, Wisconsin, June 8, 1915) 



Song of the Woodland Voices 

Tonight the woods have tongue again. 

Tonight the streams are free, 
And all the world grows young again. 

And bird and leafy tree, 
Hearing the old runes sung again, 

Shall join — shall join 

Our forest minstrelsy! 

II 

Sung hy The Spirit of June 

For as I came 

By river and hill. 

By marsh and meadow, 
Soft as shadow 
I touched with flame 
The lips that were still. 
[83 1 



GARGOYLES 



And wind and shower, 
The tongued trees. 
The dewy grasses 
In star-lit passes, 
Anemones, 
And the blue May-flower 

Came trooping after 
My magic feet. 

They follow, they follow 
To this green hollow 
With whisperings sweet 
And shy soft laughter. 

Ill 

Song of Sunrise 

Rose of the dawn — a rose in the sky, 

And the wide, white pool is a shining rose ! 

The blushing river runs dimpliijg by, 
To the sea it flows. 
The sea, the sea that is all one rose! 

Rose of the dawn — the pale, pearl moon 
Crumbles like surf on a rose-red sea, 

And the ageing stars in this youth of noon, 
They die — let them be! 
For youth, for youth is a rose like the sea! 

Rose of the dawn — and the woods are stirred 

By a wind from the rose-red east that blows. 
Life wakes with a blush at the waking bird 
To the morn that blows 
To the love in life that is all one rose! 
[84] 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



IV 

The Spirit of Sunrise 

Ye have seen, O king, in our dance this thing: 

The fleet of the silver stars, 
They sink before me in a crimson sea, 

Struck down by my sunrise bars; 
The winds go forth, east, south and north 

And west, led by desire 
Of the trembling clouds, those palpitant shrouds, 

Whose hearts are a nest of fire. 

Now springs new birth on the waking earth 

Where the winds, my couriers, run, 
And the trees and flowers, as by vernal showers. 

Are renewed and glad of the sun. 
On the gray hillsides my glory slides 

Swift, swift from crest to plain, 
Where the kindling river leaps down a-quiver 

To mix with the crimson main. 

The river awakes as the sunlight shakes 

To the waves its thousand lances; 
From emerald high land and splendid island 

The golden radiance glances! 
O King, by the might of dawn over night. 

By June, your dearest of daughters. 
By your own fair fame, O call him by name, 

Mississippi, the monarch of waters! 



85] 



GARGOYLES 



RAIN ON THE RIVER 

Rain on the river! And dance, dance, dance, 

Bobbing and tripping 

And sliding and slipping, 

One little leg dipping 
Into the stream where a drop of rain 

With a circular stain 
Melts on the river, the elf -men prance! 

One elf to a drop. 

One drop to an elf — 
Will he never stop 

To recover himself? 

Nay! 

Plop — plop — plop 
In the early morn 
The quick rain rattles and patters away! 
Who could stop 
With such an orchestra set to play 

Music riddles 
And fugues that chase 
Prom top to bottom and back again 
At a most impossible pace! 
If you don't believe me, listen then — 
To the hundred drums 
As small as your thumbs 
Hid just under the river's stop. 
Invisible fiddles, 
A tiny horn. 
And a great big bullfrog bass! 
[86] 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



And look out there on the ballroom floor 
Where every eddy has twenty score 

Of fairy dancers 

And goblin prancers! 
Each little elf-man whirls like a top. 
In a mad, mad dance they jostle and prance. 

And skip and flop 

And slip and drop 

And never stop 
For rest or breath or a change at all 
In this incredible carnival, 

This maddest 
Gladdest 

Kind of a ball ! — 
Let them rest if they possible can, 
They've danced on the river since day began! 

A RED LEAF 

A little child is crying in the wind, 
Yuhoo she sobs, and Yuhoo! 

I have seen her many times: 

On desolate moorlands and bleak, bare hilltops. 

On the myriad, pouting lips of the river, 

And in autumn trees, 

A tiny, red-coated girl 

Dancing with rage and crying: 

It is the little sister of the wind. 

She has lost her doll and seeks everjrwhere, 
Everywhere in the world. 
Hunting for it. 
And finds it not. 

[87 1 



GARGOYLES 



THE GARDEN IN SEPTEMBER 

Chill drives the wind across this lonely space 

Sadder beneath the sky than any rain. 

And wanly now the ineffectual sun 

Gleams, and the pale light fades and leaves no stain. 

As those faint ripples on the pool leave none. 

As wind across the grasses leaves no trace. 

The bleached astors stare with mournful eyes 
Upon their scrawny stems of dying leaves; 
The stricken peonies droop that now no foot 
Goes by them where the swaying grape-vine grieves, 
And foliage plants, like withered beggars, mute 
With obscure prayer, beseech the autumn skies. 

Against the eastern wall the hollyhocks 

In wild confusion of a wasted dream 

Toss vacantly like branches in a wood, 

Or bend like willows slanting toward a stream. 

And over-ripe, their flowers are as blood 

Clotted and dark upon their yellow stalks. 

And all around, the dank discolored wall 
With crumbling woodbine laden, and below 
The moss grows in the cracks of the stained walks. 
And water stands where tiles are sunken. So 
All things are dying here, where only stalks 
Of old flowers toss, and dead leaves clash and fall. . 

1881 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



O beauty over-ripe and to disuse 
Fallen in this supreme and strange decay. 
Dying, yet never dead ! When shall you die, 
When sleep, O grass, O flowers, where no birds stay, 
No April maidens pass and dream, whereby 
No poets mutter at the world's abuse? 

The golden girls are sleeping a strange sleep. 
Some with the lads they loved and more alone. 
But all asleep, too worn for any dream 
To trouble them, too tired for any moan — 
Out of the air I heard, or else the scream 
Of rubbing branches that the cedars keep, 

Or was it noise of grass in one high urn, 

Forever troubled by the keening wind? — 

The garden may not die, though lads are dead 

Who walked within it, loved and laughed and sinned • 

The lilies trembled in the lily bed — 

The maidens long ago have ceased to yearn. 

Still dance the shrivelled astors wearily. 
And still the woodbine mutters to the grass. 
The cedars moan like one gone gently mad 
And can not sleep or die ... April lass, 
Give thanks, with joy give thanks, laughing lad^ 
That you are other than these flowers he! 



[89] 



GARGOYLES 



OLD MEN 

The stars are old, old men. 

It is very cold in heaven, 

And they blink and huddle closer to the fire, 

Each at his separate hearthstone. 

And mourn for the good old times 

When peace and friendship 

Were everywhere found on earth. 

Their old limbs tremble. 

And their ancient teeth 

Chatter and shake in the cold. 

They draw their ragged blankets over their heads. 

And shout across the inter-stellar space 

That it is very cold in heaven, 

Very cold! 

It is they who cause the winking of the stars. 

The old men tremble so 

By their firesides 

That their bodies shake like the leaves of the maple in autumn. 

And the light shakes, too, 

And they dance before it 

To keep warm. 

Or shiver, sitting down, 

And moan for the good old times 

That were never cold. 



[90] 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



Deep within a coulie 
An apple-orchard glows 
With startling gleams of yellow 
And little spots of rose. 

The heavy scent of summer 
Upon the valley lies, 
The smell of ripened wheat-fields. 
The warmth of stainless skies. 

And buried in the clover 
Beneath the apple-trees 
A lass awaits her lover, 
A robin waits the breeze. 

The breeze will come by sunset. 
She hopes the lover may. — 
I know that apple-orchard, 
He will not come today. 



[91] 



GARGOYLES 



AN ABANDONED CEMETERY 

This is their immortaUty — to lie 
Among these fields of ripening corn and rye, 
Here where the tangled shadows of old trees 
Stain the rank grass and, nodding down the breeze. 
Huge growths of fireweed swarm around the graves. 

Below their little hill the slow creek laves 
Its heap of pebbly gravel by the scar 
Of raw, red clay above, and with a jar 
Like bells of music breaking, in the turn 
Shivers against the boulders. 

Did they learn 
The permanency of all impermanent things 
Because the brook flows and the black bird sings 
And weeds grow tall — tansy and cockle-burr 
And burdock — where the spire and altar were? 
For look — the shameless woodbine climbs and sprawls 
Along the broken stones of crumbling walls, 
And sapling birches quiver in the shade 
Where once the choir sang and the organ played. 

Did they not care enough, those loving ones, 
Who came with passionate tears and orisons, 
And left them here with pageantry of grief? 
Eternal sorrow, was it then so brief 
That they forget? Or was it God forgot 
Whom they adored in this forsaken spot. 
Since of His temple there remain alone 
This graveless space and tumbled piles of stone? 

[921 



FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 



God whom they called Eternal — He is gone, 
And grief has dried between the night and dawn, 
Which seemed eternal. Only transient grass, 
The brooklet never still, brown birds that pass 
Like winged moods across the blowing grain, 
Shadows and clouds and sunlight — these remain 
Where all things else, imagined without change 
Of spirit or flesh, have vanished. 

Is it strange 
These tombstones sag above the graves, or lie 
Heavy with fruitless immortality.? 
Look here: "Belove . . . wife . . Aet . . Rest 

with God," 
And here: "sister . . peace . . her soul . . " The sod 
Is sunken where they rest, and in the noons 
The crickets sing among the grass. 

Our boons 
Come strangely to us. . . . It is better so. 
Better to sleep as they do, and lie low 
Beneath the ragged shadows and the rain. 
Now they are spared the infinite slow pain 
Of stirring life above them, the loud bell. 
The quavering hymns, the words of heaven and hell. 
Them shall no trampling feet disturb, nor cries 
Of children playing make them lift their eyes, 
Vexed that the living take so little care 
To keep the fret of life away from there. 
And most of all, the futile trick of flowers 
Laid on their breasts to wither with the hours 
And force the dead remember and awaken 
From their slow sleep — this trouble, too, is taken. 
Now beyond God or man, they only have 

[93 1 



GARGOYLES 



To keep the secure quiet of the grave, 

Here where the rain falls and the tangled leaves 

Of birch and elm trees shade them. 

Past the sheaves 
Beyond the road the distant reapers whir, 
A grosbeak startles up, a grasshopper 
Sings from a headstone — sounds that like the stream 
Are drowsier than voices in a dream. . . . 
O come away and leave them where they lie 
Beneath the benediction of the sky 
While the slow sun against the west is red — 
There are none happier than forgotten dead. 



[94] 



GARGOYLES 

A EUNICE 

I 

PRELUDE 

We saw, in this mad city where we dwell, 
My dearest dear and I, a beggar dip. 
Passing along the street, and catch up dust, 
And press it to his rags, and to his lip. 
He held but mire blown dry, and yet he'd tell 
Ten pretty names for it without disgust. 

A hundred people passed him where he stood, 
Kissing that gathered dust, and to the street 
Crying, it was his dear, his love, his soul ! 
Yet no one stopped that doddering man to greet — 
Unconscious, deaf, as he were stone or wood. 
They hurried by to some more personal goal. 

My love and I, beholding one so prize 

Most filthy treasure, stared at him. Then each 

Turned suddenly, and lo! the soul had fled 

Out of the other's face, and without speech 

Our hands unclasped. We turned our stricken eyes • 

The beggar, sprawling on the street, was dead. 



95 



GARGOYLES 



II 

FANTASIA 

The city where you hve, my dear, is strange! 
There corpses hurry by in motor cars 
And dead men walk the street at six o'clock. 
Before your door a crowded street car jars, 
Whose stark conductor carefully makes change 
And rings up carrion fares at every block. 

Along the streets the lighted windows show 
Here pretty cakes for filthy hands to buy, 
There ribbons to adorn a pallid head. 
Gigantic signs are swung against the sky — 
Ice, cigarettes, and beer. Does no one know 
Your city is the city of the dead? 

Why, there is mold upon your very walk, 
And bones fall down along the curbstone. Still 
That strange policeman never moves his eyes 
(His blue coat smells like earth) and never will. 
Queer, that the dead should rise each morn to walk 
Such rotting squares beneath indifferent skies! 

And, sweet, this very letter that I send 
A staring corpse delivers at your door; 
Cold, ghoulish fingers twitter at your arm 
To guide your feet across the ballroom floor. 
And you yourself — O God of Heaven f orfend ! — 
The mouth that has kissed mine is scarcely warm! 
[96] 



GARGOYLES 



III 

NOCTURNE 

Under the moon we hear the stormy lake 
Toss Hke a man in sick-bed endlessly, 
And suddenly we turn and cling and kiss, 
Searching some passionate door to endless bliss 
Beneath the driven stars, above the sea. 
Beyond the death-like town where none awake. 

We lean against the gale. With feverish lips 
Our spirits climb the crags and towers of night, 
Hunting behind the wind some windless grot, 
Some city in the sea that trembles not. 
Or in the rack of driven cloud and light 
Some clock behind the stars that never slips. 

And O the senseless way we seek for these! 
You clasp me in your arms, your face is blind, 
Uplifted to my mad and thirsty mouth! 
Eternity we somehow seek in youth. 
Youth that is less than foam or cloud or wind, 
Beneath the stars, beside the tumbling seas! 



97 



GARGOYLES 



IV 

IMMORTALITY 

Eunice, when this wild music that we hear 

Is silent, and the fever and the passion. 

The rich mouth shaping to a lover's kiss, 

The bosom and the arms of you, the fear 

Of loss, the hope of some dim, ultimate bliss — 

When all this arch is dust which now we fashion. 

And you are grass upspringing from a grave. 
And I in some far corner of the world 
Enrich the earth by one more lover's heart. 
They will not know the good we worked to save. 
They will not care what stars we saw, or start 
Because upon my breast your hand is curled! 

Instead, the Tribune on its thirteenth page. 
In little type, along with stocks and such, 
(And marriages) will list your name and mine. 
And Christian Shimultowski's name and age, 
And Mamie Kaeppler's, dead at forty-nine. 
Beloved wife of John, who mourns her much. 



198] 



GARGOYLES 



GROTESQUE 

It is most odd to see a skeleton eat, 
Jingling the knife and fork against its teeth! 
It is most odd to see a skeleton shed 
An opera cloak, and carefully unsheathe 
Its arms of snowy gloves, and take its seat, 
A fluffy hat upon its grinning head. 

The Blackstone dining room is soft and pink. 
The wine is excellent, the music good. 
You would not think to see a skeleton there! 
Yet Thursday night across our dainty food 
I sat with one at table. Dear, don't shrink. 
This terrapin is really very fair. 



VI 

THEME AND VARIATIONS 

I do recall the feet of many lovers 
Trod the same roses into dust as we. 
And in the gloom which round this city hovers 
They feverishly kissed like you and me. 
And passed to dissolution and to dust. 
Even, O my dearest heart, even as we must! 
[99] 



GARGOYLES 



I do recall the shadow-wandering faces 

Of poets in the twilight ere I came: 

They walk behind the night with velvet paces, 

Upon the streets their heads are pale with flame, 

Each one alone, apart, and desolate. 

Oblivious music fingered on by fate. 

I do recall the maidens and the laughter. 
Red lips we trample in the street's much dust. 
Eyelids and bosoms that men hungered after. 
And bodies that were made for love and lust — 
A thousand years of kisses pave the street, 
Beloved, underneath your careless feet! 

O heart! The night is full of ghosts and pity! 
Shadows, old tears, embraces stir the trees. 
And souls that wandered this indifferent city 
When time was young are kissing in the breeze — 
Despite the asseveration of your face, 
The death of lovers is so commonplace ! 



VII 
FRESCO 

Behold a student in a little room 
(The same being I) who pores upon a book. 
Outside, the April sky is like a child. 
And dandelions gleam, and winds are mild, 
But here at college is a crazy nook 
By spring forgot, the world being all a-bloom! 
[100] 



GARGOYLES 



Through owl-Uke spectacles the student reads 
(Myself being he) . That book he deems as gold 
Which deals with buried kings and lovers dead. 
For tiptoeing, they cluster round his head. 
Thin majesties with crowns of phantom gold. 
And lovely lads for whom the world yet bleeds, 

What need has he of spring who holds in fee 
Imperial Caesars, kings with brows anoint. 
Ladies that were great lovers long ago? . . . 
Only the corners of his chamber show 
Row after row of ghastly hands which point. 
And shadowy lips that grin sardonically. 



VIII 
MOTTO 

Our city has a playhouse where we go 

And sit in darkness, clasping hands, and hark; 

The curtain never rises while we stay. 

But on its front two flickering lanterns play 

Sometimes in that funereal gloom and lo! 

Touching, they vanish and the house is dark. 



101 



GARGOYLES 



IX 

HAMLET 

Odd, is it not? The sacred hand I kiss. 

So curiously formed with skin and joint. 

Whose flesh love's chrism, whose touch love's charms anoint^ 

In nothing differs from more rotten flesh; 

And yet with promise of eternal bliss 

Mere carrion finger-tips a soul enmesh! 

A soul, or what the flow of chemic change 
In this queer net of unconsidered cells. 
As soul to blind, peculiar atoms tells. 
Whose home is brain, whose motion is the me! 
Odd — but as lover you are still more strange, 
And you are strangest as eternity! 

O God! that mere mortality should take 
Presumption from the touch of lover's hands; 
Or dead men think corruption ever stands 
Because two hands are love's galvanic poles; 
That law or dream or custom so mistake 
And curiously tangle us with souls ! 



[102 



GARGOYLES 



X 

ARABESQUE 

In love, men want Byronic brows of night. 
They scale no stars, nor Uke Hernani die; 
Romantic is proclaimed a childish lie. 
And even in opera, Werther's out of date. 
The breed of lovers, haply, is not great? 
Or was the immortal flame mere candle light? 

I am, I swear, chin-deep in love with you. 

Yet have not sighed nor cursed, and neither recks 

This mere propinquity of youth and sex 

A portent of our immortality! 

What is this thing called love for which men die? 

Or do the liars treat the false as true? 

Love sits not in your lips, your face, your eyes — 

Your body is the haunt of sex and time! 

If either brags heroic prose or rhyme. 

The other smiles. (We moderns live for taste! 

We can not bound all heaven in a waist, 

Or leap upon a kiss to Paradise!) 

Young love is old, old love was spent in vain 
Down every age that found its women fair. 
For us, a satyr grins beside you there. 
Or else the cloth a skeleton bedecks. 
My dear, we lack the candor that is sex, 
And know too much to be insanely sane! 
1 103 ] 



GARGOYLES 



XI 

FUGUE SOLONELLE 

Well, if men lied concerning love till now, 

Admit, at least, she has a pretty waist. 

And even though she flirt, her clothes are chaste, — 

There's beauty in her! Then no matter how; 

Instead of women, if men females take. 

Still note the pleasant friends that females make. 

Wise words! We are not souls who taste the stars 

Upon the blur and tumult of a kiss : 

There is a purpose in our sexual bliss. 

Time, like a huge and hostile engine, jars 

The seven planets even as we wed, 

And corpse-like do we creep to marriage-bed. 

Yet, nonetheless, a flash ere death appears. 

The mighty wheels of life have once revolved. 

Anew the dying planet is absolved 

From stoppage with the throbbing of the years. . . 

Wise words! Since vast mechanic wheels are cased 

Within those lovely eyes, that modest waist! 



[104 



GARGOYLES 



XII 

INTERLUDE 

At Miller now the plums are blossoming 
Upon the hills in May, and in the hollows 
Arbutus shyly blows. The skeleton dunes 
Whose ribs all winter made fantastic tunes 
Feather with delicate green. I saw two swallows 
Swooping above the sands like very spring. 

Last March the lake had on a belt of snow 
White in the winter sun, an icy ring 
Where now is all the blue of Helen's eyes. 
Softly the foam fleets rise and fall and rise 
Against the yellow sands with murmuring, 
Speaking some secret matter as they flow. 

In May, I think, the resurrection hour 

Comes here upon the dunes! These are not hills 

Of dust and sand. They are the mingling lips 

Of lovers who were lost on many ships, 

And every grain of sand that downward spills 

Was once a kiss and soon will be a flower. 



105] 



GARGOYLES 



XIII 

DIALECTICS 

I blame you for your virtue and my shame, 
I blame you for the good you forced me to! 
Alas! what virtue is in being you, 
If you, renunciate, are as others are, 
A tedious candle and no lawless star, 
A mere example for the good to name? 

Men say you were heroic, loving me, 

Yet, for your conscience, putting passion by; 

Ah, know their praises curse you more than I, 

For shifty virtue ever causes ill. 

And devils mask men's cowardice as will, 

And lust in hell is named sobriety. 

I say, your welfare is imperilled still; 

The torment that I have, I say, is you; 

I say, the expectancy you led me to 

Will damn you when your moderation's dead; 

My ruin falls upon a saintly head, 

And you are lost for good, as I, for ill ! 



[106] 



GARGOYLES 



XIV 

MARCHE 

It is not God's desire to cheat us so: 
Himself removes from brightness into shade 
According to the custom He has made 
Unwittingly. Himself He can not mend. 
Helpless, He flows toward some determined end 
As moons arise or waters ebb and flow. 

Be just and do not blame Him. Had He known, 

I think He would have builded otherwise, 

Himself being gentle. When a lover dies 

He grieves and would not have it. He is spun 

Round a machine whose flywheel is the sun. 

Whose bolts are stars, whose humming drowns His moan. 

And though we sat together on the heights, 
And kissed amid the hollows of the hills. 
Let's smile and bravely part before His mills 
Shall turn again. So shall we spare Him pain. 
And He will be a little glad and gain 
Some courage to endure His lonely nights. 



[ 107 



GARGOYLES 



XV 

ALLEGORY 

There is a temple in our mystic city 
Where mumbhng masks perpetually come. 
The mighty gates are brass. Two women stand, 
Two brazen figures, veiled and vast and dumb. 
Beside the doors like sentinels on each hand. 
And one is Fear, and one — alas! — is Pity. 

Within those speechless courts, that awful portal. 

The light of sun or star is never known: 

Dim pillars rise and some strange altar fire 

Burns gem-like in the dark where shadows moan. 

And hollow echoes as of bells are dire, 

And mockery flouts the path of every mortal. 

There, from the velvet walls drip down confusion, 
Mixings of soul and sense, of shadow and sound 
Which on the spirit fall like blood and rain. 
I think the place is some enchanted ground 
Where kneeling masks implore eternal pain 
Of their mad god whose name is Disillusion ! 

My soul, my love and I came here one day. 

And wondered at the walls, the fire, the floors, 

The drip of silence and the lisping dead, 

And all we knelt by vague, mysterious doors — 

Then horror fell upon us and we fled. 

My love and I. My soul remained to pray. 

[108] 



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